


The Isolato Principle

by Sol1056



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossing Timelines, Developing Relationship, F/M, M/M, Multi, Parallel Universes, Retcon Timeline, Science Fiction & Fantasy, the universe is a bag of marbles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2019-12-18 04:39:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18242549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sol1056/pseuds/Sol1056
Summary: In the wake of realities destroyed and created new, other realities on the periphery are caught up in the maelstrom. In one of them, Shiro has survived almost two years in Galra captivity. When the chance for escape presents itself, Shiro doesn't ask questions. Doesn't mean he doesn't have any. It's just: how do you ask two strangers to explain their completely independent and yet perfectly synchronized rescue missions, when they clearly hate each other—and they're both clearly in love with you?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [irrationalno](https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrationalno/gifts).



> as requested, and I ended up agreeing because I need another story on my plate like I need another hole in my head, but hey, here we are.

How many months had it been? Shiro had lost track. No daylight, no night shift, only endless rows of cells along identical hallways. He'd tried counting his steps, counting the corridors, counting the purple-gray guards' rotations, until the numbers bled together. He continued to count, no matter how meaningless it really was. The sound of his own voice was the last shred of anything that reminded him of being human.

At alternating points, the guards would escort him in the opposite direction of the arena. Sometimes he could imagine hearing the crowds in the space station, how many levels above him, the noise rising as the guards took him up the lift for another fight. The other times, the lift dropped, the guards lowering their voices. Even their footfalls were silent.

Shiro had fought, the first few times. Nothing had come of it, punishment or escape. He was hooked to machines, his wounds tended if overly investigated, often without anesthesia.

The one time he'd fought back at the pain was the time he'd woken back in his cell, with his right arm gone. A new prosthesis took its place, a strange mechanism of chrome and black, with all the sensation and strength of his own arm, and then some.

He didn't fight back, after that. So long as they didn't strap him down.

Until the day they did, again.

He kicked, twisting enough to get a solid blow against one of the scientist's legs. The Galra fell sideways with a shriek. Two more took his place, holding Shiro's leg down for the straps to slide and lock into place. Another across his chest, and a final one across his face. Its edges cut into his skin as he thrashed, slicing through scar tissue until blood ran down his cheeks.

"No!" Shiro arched his back, yanked with his arms. "I've done what you asked. Get these off me!" He collapsed backwards, chest heaving, but the straps kept him from getting a full breath.

A scientist approached. Shiro strained his eyes trying to follow the Galra, to have some warning of what would come next. When the Galra paused beside the rotating blade, Shiro went into a frenzy. He'd broken the straps, once. They'd reinforced the bindings since, but one thing Shiro had learned was that with enough pressure, anything would break.

Just like him.

Another Galra shoved a needle into Shiro's human arm. Whatever they used was far beyond anything he'd experienced on earth. Almost instantaneously, a sluggish feeling spread through his muscles. First his arm went numb, then his shoulder.

"What are you doing?" Shiro cried. It was pure instinct, to twist as though he could retreat from his own body. "You already took my hand! What more do you want?"

"Stop!" A deep voice said, knocking away the hand holding the needle. "I want him awake enough to feel this."

Almost instantly, the scientist turned on his colleagues. He sent one flying, and snapped the neck of the other. Then he was around the table, bending over Shiro's prosthesis. A slight pressure, a hint of a sting. Shiro's vision blurred.

The scientist spoke fast, urgently. Something about a lion on earth. Shiro's hearing faded, his mind growing sluggish with his body. For a split-second, he felt pulled. Not physically, but as though his spirit had leapt upwards.

He snapped back into his body as the Galra slapped him, hard.

"Shiro," the person said, "Stay with me."

The shape had changed, as had the voice. Shiro blinked at the lights overhead. They'd been the color of the sky just after sunset, he'd thought. Now they were the color of dried blood. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts.

"Who are you?" Shiro asked, hating the crack in his voice.

"Shiro, it's me—"

The person closed their eyes, and to Shiro's shock, shifted. The purple faded as the face elongated into a delicate pointed chin, ears curling back instead of sticking out. The black hair became white. When the woman opened her eyes again, her pupils were the clear blue-green of a summer lake.

"Allura," the woman said, smiling.

Shiro stared at her, blankly. She was beautiful, though from the crescent marks on her cheeks and the tips of her ears—and the fact she'd been Galra only a moment before—she was also an alien. Unlike any he'd seen in the arena, though.

"Come on!" Her smile faltering, she undid the straps and helped him up. "Get to a pod, wait for me there. I'm going to leave a few gifts for Zarkon while I'm here."

For no reason Shiro could determine, her words felt off. He'd been expecting something else, but at the same time, he'd expected nothing. Shiro accepted her help, stumbling to the door. She checked the hall, while he could only stare at her, helplessly.

"Shiro, I need you to focus," she said. "You're strong. You can fight off whatever they put in you."

Her identity had told him nothing. A different question, then. "Why are you helping me?"

Allura's eyes widened, and she pulled back, a line creasing her brow. "Because you're our leader. Without you, we have no hope." Her expression softened, and without warning, she pressed her lips to his, lingering long enough to stroke fingers down his cheek. "Without you, _I_ had no hope."

"I don't—" Shiro had no idea what else to say.

"Enough, hurry, down that hall. When it dead-ends, go right. I'll meet you there." With another quick kiss and smile, Allura shifted back to her Galra appearance. A blur of movement and she was gone, sprinting down the corridor in the opposite direction.

He somehow got to his feet, stumbling along with a shoulder against the wall for balance. Sounds echoed in his head, and his left arm remained numb. At least the guards were regular enough, marching past in pairs. They looked neither right nor left. Shiro ducked into a side-corridor, counting. Always counting.

He had the end of the hall in sight when some instinct alerted him. He glanced both ways, and darted backwards into the nearest side-corridor. A hand landed on his arm, and he almost shouted in surprise.

"It's okay, it's me," the voice said.

Another alien species Shiro had never seen. Slender, shorter than Shiro, with a featureless face except for two glowing pupiless eyes. The figure's armor was reminiscent of Galra officer uniforms, but the slashes on the chest were a soft blue. Shiro's vision buzzed like an old television fritzing, and the slashes were a saturated purple.

The alien removed their hand from Shiro's arm with exaggerated slowness. "Shiro," it said.

Shiro stared dumbly. How long had he been waiting, planning, hoping to escape? A year. Two years? Could be. And now in one day, twice the help he'd had before. Which was nothing, but that was one thing Shiro chose not to count.

"Who are you?" Shiro asked.

"It's me. Keith." The person's face dissolved. A mask, revealing a human face, with dark unruly hair, part curl, part tangle. Male, young, and distinctly worried. "Hurry, this way. We don't have much time."

Shiro's mind churned sluggishly through questions, and no spare energy to ask them. He'd seen no humans since his crewmates were taken… he couldn't recall where. Away. How had the garrison known where to find him? Why would they go to this length for one person? His head felt thick, and his feet moved only through sheer force of will.

"The pod should be this way," Keith said. "Ulaz said he'd have one ready."

"To the end, and take a right," Shiro supplied, automatically. The name Keith had used felt familiar on his tongue, but triggered no memory. "Who's Ulaz?"

"Our ally. He arranged to get you to here." The young man cast a quick smile at Shiro, and in the main corridor's brighter lights, it was suddenly clear he wasn't entirely human, if at all.

Each cheek was scored by a purple line, from his jaw to his cheekbones, and the lines continued down into the neck of his uniform. Shiro could've written it off as odd tattoos, except for Kieth's sclera being a faint yellow. Maybe jaundice was a thing, in space. Along with preternaturally long eyeteeth. 

"Stay with me," the young man said. "Ulaz said the new drugs were strong. But I know you're stronger."  

Another theme of the day, it seemed. Shiro struggled to find something to say. He opened his mouth, hoping the right words would fall out.

Instead, he found Keith's tongue in his mouth. With no warning, Keith had yanked Shiro forward by his tunic, and was kissing him. Hard and furious, and just as quickly the sensation subsided. Shiro had barely had a chance to react, and Keith was pressing his cheek to Shiro's. Keith's cheek was wet.

"I knew you were out there, somewhere," Keith whispered. "I wasn't going to lose you again."

Shiro was pretty sure one endless stretch as a Galra pincushion was enough. He couldn't recall being lost before that. Then again, some days he couldn't remember much of anything. Maybe he'd been lost multiple times.

"Come on, we're almost there." Keith's eyes glittered, but his expression was joyful.

Shiro nodded, focused on continuing to move steadily forward, while the young man darted forward, signaled, and back to Shiro, assisting him quickly forward. The floors shook suddenly, reverberating, as an explosion went off far behind them.

"Shit, they know we're here. Move!' Keith urged Shiro forward, as more explosions racked the space station.  

The pod waited, doors open, tucked into the side bay at the corridor's farthest end. To the right, as the other rescuer had directed. Keith settled Shiro into a seat, mask sliding into place at the sound of quick footsteps.

A single Galra soldier stood at the opening, back to Shiro, gun in one hand. Keith stepped forward, then pulled back beside Shiro as the bay entrance doors slid open. A phalanx of sentries waited in position, guns raised. The Galra soldier hit the pod release. The pod doors slid shut just as the sentries' shots hit the pod's exterior. It sounded like pings of gravel on a car's underside.

The pod ejected from the little bay. Shiro watched in groggy fascination as the pod's trajectory gave him a view, for the first time, of just how massive the space station had been.

And now he was free, somehow.

Or perhaps not entirely. Before the Galra soldier could remove their helmet, Keith had covered the distance to hold a nasty-looking purple-silver scimitar to the Galra's throat. The Galra towered over Keith by a head, yet Keith showed no fear. Shiro watched, fascinated and baffled.

"Move slow," Keith said, in a low growl. "Who sent you?"

The Galra soldier reached up, pushing the helmet off. The figure shifted, shrinking from that height over Shiro's head, down to only an inch or two shorter than Keith. It was enough to startle Keith, and his blade wavered. In the next instant, Allura smashed her helmet up the side of Keith's head, knocked the blade from his hand, and swept his legs.

Keith crashed to the floor, and Allura was immediately on him. She held a short stick that glowed white-hot. It didn't seem to bother her, but Keith's heels kicked at the pod floor, trying to arch away from the stick. A second passed, and Allura sat back, powering down her odd weapon.

"Keith?" She sounded completely baffled. "You're alive?"

Keith stared up at her, eyes wide, mouth open. "Allura?"

She crawled off Keith, and in Shiro's half-drugged opinion, she didn't actually look that pleased. Neither did Keith, who sat up, scooting away from her to retrieve his own weapon. Oddly, only a short knife, now.

The pod's lights dimmed for a second, then steadied, and the air seemed to shift around Shiro. A strange sensation of weightless momentum, almost like doing zero-grav tests in astronaut training. Whatever the Galra had used on him, he never wanted near him again, for any reason. Bad enough what it did to his body. Whatever it was doing to his head was ten times worse. 

Shiro rubbed his forehead. The buried anger that'd kept him going roiled in his gut, gradually fading as a peculiar lassitude took over. He could stop counting for the first time in too long, though he couldn't yet feel any relief. It could all be a hallucination. Who knew, with the Galra. If it was, it was one he didn't want to see end. All that hell, and somehow, he'd finally escaped. He wanted to believe so, at least. Or maybe it was more accurate to say he'd been escaped. Twice.

The odd stalemate broke, as Keith and Allura began talking at the same time. It seemed to amount to both of them asking twice as many questions as they each answered. Nothing they said made any sense, especially with both dropping names Shiro recalled vaguely from earth. Younger students, maybe. Had there been a rescue mission, after all? His head pounded harder, as the argument grew thick with accusations. Some innocuous, and some definitely barbed enough to be fighting words. Their voices rose, heated. Keith's shoulders hunched and his knife abruptly elongated into a scimitar. Allura's weapon flared as she bent her knees, preparing to lunge. 

In the momentary stillness, Shiro put up his hands. "It's obvious you two don't get along. But could the bloodshed wait until I've passed out? I've had enough for one lifetime, already."

"Sorry." Allura cast an angry look at Keith, and powered down her weapon, tucking it away. "I have the suppressant, that'll cover things until the drug's out of—"

"No," Keith sat up, pulling out a vial. "That's not safe. Use this. Ulaz developed it specifically—"

"Wait," Shiro said, not really interested in more unknown drugs flooding his system, however much his instincts said otherwise. He looked back and forth between the two aliens: the almost-human man, the humanoid woman. "First… who _are_ you?"  


	2. Chapter 2

Allura leaned against the pod's secondary screens, positioned so she could keep an eye on Shiro—fast asleep, after turning down both the antidote and the suppressant. It also meant she could keep a careful eye on Keith's profile, as he tapped impatiently at the pod's controls. Shiro had asked his one question and promptly passed out. They'd chosen not to waken him, too unsettled by the strange question. They'd made him comfortable, hoping sleep would clear his system, and taken up an uncomfortable truce. If only because yelling had gotten them nowhere, and it'd only wake Shiro.

It did bother her that the usual rebel frequencies were silent, but it wasn't the first time. They all knew to go to ground when the empire came snooping. She just had to wait it out. The real frustration lay in not having gotten to the pod first, to set its destination coordinates. Keith was getting the same radio silence, and wasn't taking it well, at all. His hair was longer, the marks on his cheeks and the black tips of his thick curved fingernails undeniable proof of his Galra heritage—and a new sight, to Allura. The seething frustration was not.

"Damn it!" Keith pounded a fist on the console. "It's not just that no one's answering. There's _nothing there_." He called up the map for the local system, scrolling through it to the next system over. "There should be twelve planets in this system. There's only ten."

Allura studied the system, noting the planetary arcs. One looked familiar, icy-white despite so close to its sun. She flicked a finger, enlarging it.

"It's the Thayserix system," she said. "Ten planets?" She could've sworn that system only had six, and none in the inhabitable region. But she'd been through so many systems in the past decapheobs, she hadn't really noted which was which, in a long time.

"Yeah, it's missing two." Keith poked a finger at a space between the third and fourth planets. "Puig should be here, and then Urto."

"Maybe the Galra took them out." Allura shrugged. "It's not that common, but it happens. Something to do with Haggar's experiments."

"Not that fast. There'd be debris. Something." He spun the star map again, enlarging areas, frowning at whatever he found. 

"Take a break," Allura said, unable to resist getting in a dig. "You still haven't learned when to quit."

To her surprise, Keith visibly flinched. "I didn't quit. I would've stayed, if—"

"Stayed?" Allura shook her head. "Staying is what got you blown up! You wouldn't listen to Coran, wouldn't disengage—" Her tone turned mocking. "Not you! Outnumbered and outgunned, you still had to—"

"What are you talking about?" Keith stared at her, puzzlement too obvious to be feigned. "You ordered me off the team! You didn't want a _Galra_ flying your father's lion—"

No wonder Keith seemed off. Damn those Marmora. "When the Blades put you back together, they messed with your memories." She had to hope the same hadn't happened to Shiro. It might be the only explanation for the look of utter confusion Shiro had given her, when she'd finally had a chance to return his kiss.

"The Blades didn't touch my memories," Keith retorted. "And they didn't put me back together—" He cut off, looking away, a shadow crossing his face. Something she'd said must've been close to the truth, because Keith still couldn't lie to save his life.

She chose instead to tackle the easiest part, in the details. "If Yellow had chosen you, I never would've had a problem with that. But Yellow was always happiest with Hunk—"

"Yellow?" Keith frowned. "Who said anything about Yellow?"

"My father's lion," Allura said, annoyed. "I wouldn't—"

"Your father flew _Green!_ "    

Shiro muttered something in his sleep, face creasing. Allura held her breath, as did Keith, until Shiro fell back into deeper sleep. Allura tapped her wrist console, sending out another volley of encrypted messages. The pod had jumped onto another hyperlane, sending them towards the Darba system. The fourth planet's smaller moon had a rebel base.

"Your father flew Green," Keith said, quieter.

Allura pushed away from the console edge. "I'd know which lion he flew, I was—"

"Just _listen_." Keith dismissed the star map, still hanging between them. "I came to space with Shiro, Hunk, Veronica, and Pidge. When Pidge found clues about where the Galra were holding her father, she tried to leave the team. She ended up staying, but Green rejected her, after that. Except you refused the lion's choices to switch—"

"I wouldn't!" Allura knew that much. "And who the hell is—"

"Let me _finish_." A year had put more steel in Keith's spine. "Shiro knew who'd rescued him, and we met with the Blade of Marmora. And this—" He drew his knife, and it elongated into an elegant scimitar with a flash of blue. "Meant I'm also Galra. Through my father."

"Your mother," Allura said, automatically. "You told me your father was a fireman."

"She was a cop, but—" Keith waved his hand, dismissing her words, perhaps as a misunderstanding of the terran terms. "I regretted leaving, even when it was clear it was the only choice I had. When we heard..." He glanced towards Shiro's sleeping form. "I owed him. It was too late to do anything for the rest of you, but I had to find him."

"None of that makes any sense," Allura said. "I can't fathom driving you off the team. Red chose you for a reason."

"Red?" Keith frowned. "I flew Blue."

Allura laughed. It had to be a last hallucination, while her mind struggled to make sense of its own mortality. "You flew Red. Hunk flew my father's lion. Lance flew Blue—"

"Who's Lance?" Keith seemed to thinking hard. "The name's familiar..."

"And Matt flew Green," Allura continued. "He was looking for his mother and sister. He wanted to go after them, but Shiro talked him into staying. And then it all went wrong after we infiltrated that base." She stared at the empty space where the star map had hung; easier than looking at the mix of emotions flickering across Keith's face. "Once Zarkon recaptured Black..it was like watching everything be destroyed in slow motion. You went after Zarkon. Hunk and I went after Shiro, but Haggar got him first, and we—" She couldn't close her eyes, or she'd see the view from over Hunk's shoulder as he'd carried her bodily away from taking on Haggar, all by herself.  

"What happened?" Keith asked, in a strangely tentative voice.

"Zarkon killed you. Destroyed Red." Allura waved a hand, perhaps to illustrate the arc of Red flying into a million glittering ashes, perhaps to wipe away the terrible memory. "Matt and Lance got us out, but they—" She shook her head. "For so long, Hunk and I thought you dead, too. The least you could've—"

"I don't think you're my Allura." Keith stared at her, eyes wide, drifting up and down her, as if taking all of her in. "I don't think I'm your Keith, either."

"Who else would—" Allura halted, uneasy with the implications. It wasn't possible. There had to be some other explanation. "How long did it take you, to find Shiro?"

"I'd barely found the designated location when—"

"No, to find out he was alive." Allura's mind raced. It couldn't be possible—unless one or both of them had been so severely injured as to be working with jumbled memories—but it'd explain at least one thing. "When did you learn that?"

"Five quintants." A frown creased Keith's face, darkening the galra marks on his cheeks. "It feels like years, though. But also only hours…"

"Hunk and I had been working for pheobs, trying to decrypt the empire's transmissions. We'd found an abandoned base, broken into the system. I was dealing with routing the power, while Hunk ran our models." She'd been at one end of the central room, manually adjusting the trickle of power from the castle into the base. Just enough to power the systems, not enough to put it fully online and alert the Galra. "At first he said… he found a report. Black had been dismantled, and its wings successfully attached to a new model. Then he sort of hollered, saying the message was gone—"

"And new ones appeared," Keith said, softly, intently. "Some disappearing, some changing while you looked at them—"

"We thought the system was corrupt." Allura took a breath. "Hunk worked as fast as he could, trying to capture the messages, make sense of them. I couldn't join him, the power kept failing and surging—then suddenly he said, _It's Shiro. He's alive, in the arena."_ She couldn't meet Keith's eyes. "Those were Hunk's last words, just before everything exploded. The Galra must've been alerted by the power surges. When I came to, the base was empty wreckage, the castle had been completely destroyed and Hunk…"

"He didn't make it?" Keith whispered.

"I don't know. I couldn't find his body."

Keith closed his eyes.

"That was three quintants ago. I found a single working shuttle, set my course, and made my plans on the way. I should hurt more for losing the last friend I had, yet…" She thumped her chest. "It feels like I had a decapheob to mourn him. Or more."

"Zarkon died in a coup, maybe a decapheob ago," Keith said. "Haggar and Zarkon's son. Turns out, Sincline's smarter than his father, and has spies everywhere. First Voltron, then the rebels, then the Blades. We split up to confuse the trail." Keith's smile was bitter. "He just picked us off in twos and threes. Far as I know, Thace and I were the last. Until Ulaz—"

"He's alive?" Allura burst out. If Ulaz had survived that explosion, maybe—

"He'd gone dark, like everyone. Too dangerous," Keith said. "Suddenly, he sent word on a little-used channel. Shiro had returned to the arena. He included coordinates, said he had a plan, needed our help. Thace was worried it was a trap, but I—"

"Thace? But wasn't he in high command?" Allura rubbed her forehead. Perhaps they were stuck in a time-loop anomaly, yet the console's readings looked normal. Whatever that meant, anymore.

"No, that was Prorok," Keith said, startled. "Thace was Kolivan's second-in-command."

"What about Antok?"

"I don't know an Antok. I told Thace if Shiro had survived, and we found—" He swallowed hard. "I had to find him. We had a small shuttle, enough power for one jump. We came out of the hyperlane, aiming for the radar shadow behind the ring. Malfunction, space debris, I'm not sure. The shuttle exploded, killing Thace. I was blown out, but managed to get to the ring. Found a way in."

"And that was how long ago?"

"Three quintants."

"None of what you say makes sense." Somehow, it was easier to admit, if this wasn't the same Keith. She'd barely known him anyway; he'd been little more than a watchful presence at Shiro's elbow. "But I suppose none of what I say fits what you know, either."

Keith exhaled, long and low. He had no answer for that.

"That system, the one you said had twelve planets? I'm positive it had half that, but… it's getting harder to remember." She pressed long fingers to her temples, massaging firmly. "It feels like someone's got their fingers in my skull, rearranging."

"It's not possible," Keith said. "You can't just—well, whatever you're suggesting someone might've done."

"What happened to the Black Lion, in your…" Allura paused, not quite sure she was ready to award the situation a formal word. "Version of events."

Keith's fleeting smile was a surprise. "Roundabout."

"Yes, well. Until we know more, it'll do. So? What happened to the Black Lion?"

"Sincline captured it, and we—I—" Keith looked away. "We were tracing strange shipments in official Galra vessels, but on unofficial hyperlanes. A new kind of quintessence, at first. And then, parts for some unknown machine, made of a metal no one recognized, with properties that shouldn't even be possible. We managed to steal a single part, get it tested. The Blade scientists couldn't even figure out how someone could've put it through the process to turn it into metal."

"What kinds of properties?"

"Hard to describe. It's sort of like this." Keith drew his blade. It flickered into life, elongating into its full shape. "Luxite responds to specific genetic—I don't know what they're called."

"Torukivana?" Allura supplied. "Pivokrosria?"

Keith shrugged. "Thace told me it's a certain combination of over a hundred things. Every species has some of them, but only the Galra possess all of them."

"Including their children," Allura couldn't resist adding. "Even those with only one Galra parent."

Keith's cheeks darkened, and he let the blade retract to its resting form. "Exposed to different things, that metal responded, like luxite does to Galra. But It'd be like if awakening the blade—" His mouth flattened, as if he didn't entirely believe what he said. "If it sent the blade somewhere else."

"Like how the oracles teleport?"

"If you mean Haggar's magi, not really." Keith's shoulders hunched. "The metal literally went _somewhere_. One time, when the metal came back… it was wet. Like it'd been out in the rain. Another time, it was hot enough to burn a hole through the containment bubble."

"Those were pieces of the Black Lion." Allura felt ill. "That's something only Black can do. When I was little, Zarkon described it to me as—"

"You _knew_ Zarkon?"

"When I was little, and our peoples were peaceful, yes." Allura looked away, nettled. "Until Zarkon and my father had a falling-out. It tore Voltron apart, everyone took sides, and…" She didn't want to go into the history, but clearly it was history Keith didn't know.

"Hunh." As easily as that, Keith seemed to dismiss Allura's embarrassment. "Shiro never mentioned Black doing anything like that."

"I don't know if your Shiro had unlocked that ability. Mine came so close." She realized what she'd said, and scrambled to cover the admission. "In my version… Haggar could've done that. Once Zarkon reclaimed Black, we never heard anything else. I'd assumed the lion had refused him."

"Maybe," Keith said, accepting the conversational diversion.  

Too easily, compared to the Keith she'd known. That Keith had let nothing past him, even if the extent of his reaction was merely to show his contempt openly. The closer she and Shiro got, the more wary Keith became. Sometimes it had felt as though Keith were waiting to kill her for hurting Shiro. Ironic, when in the end, they both lost Shiro. And she lost everything. Again.

"Allura?" Keith asked, brows wrinkled. "Are you alright?"

"What was she like?" Allura suddenly needed to know. "The Allura you knew."

Keith's eyes went wide, his weight shifting onto his heels. "She was…" He looked around the cabin, wildly; it was his turn to be embarrassed. "Well, beautiful. But cold. She'd... had a title and a people…" He looked distinctly uncomfortable. "And she intended to have both, again."

"Zarkon wasn't her goal? Defeating him, I mean."

"Not really." Keith seemed to give way, settling down on the floor with his back to the main console station. He wrapped his arms around his knees. "The lions always felt like an afterthought. They didn't mean anything to her, beyond something she possessed. To recapture Altea's once-glorious past." He nearly spat the words.

Shiro shifted on the pod's sleeping pallet. The blanket slid halfway off him, and he fumbled sleepily. In two steps, Allura was at his side, catching the blanket, drawing it up across his hips. His hand caught it, tugged it upwards. He rolled over with his back to them, and his breathing evened out, into the deep sleep of the truly exhausted.

She tapped the pod's controls, lowering the lights even further. "The pod has limited emergency rations," she explained. "Without any confirmation of what else is out there, we'll need to conserve the pod's batteries."

"And our own." Keith's laugh was more of a quicker breath, in the darkness.  

"That, too." Allura slid down to sit with her legs folded, leaning against the side-console. "It sounds like you were just the means to an end. With your Allura."

"Yeah." Keith's shrug wasn't visible, but his Marmora armor brushed the metal surface. "When we found out about me, she was… I didn't fit, anymore."

"And she threw you off the team," Allura guessed.

The silence continued long enough that Allura tensed, worrying she'd said too much.

Keith exhaled, a regretful sound. "Not in so many words, but it was hard to miss. Even for me. Not like I fought that hard to stay. I should've. If I had, everything might've been different."

Allura wrapped her arms around herself. She had a feeling that something had changed, something so immense that it made no difference what any of them had done. The playing board had been wiped clean. All their carefully-planned stratagems and desperate gambles meant nothing, now. It was a new game, with new players, and the rules still unknown.

Keith, still so much like the Keith she'd known in at least one respect, broke the silence. Direct and to the point. "If you're not my Allura, and I'm not your Keith, whose Shiro is that?"


End file.
